That Same Old Familiar Feeling
by Tim Kelby
Summary: Paralysed by a rare Leviathan disease, Moya is forced to take cover in a mysterious nebula. But as her symptoms worsen, strange things begin to happen. Are they connected with Moya's ailment? Or are they something even more dangerous?
1. Tempus Fractus

That Same Old Familiar Feeling: Part 1 - Tempus Fractus 

**FARSCAPE**

**That Same Old Familiar Feeling**

**Rating: **G   
**Category: **Action   
**Description: **Paralysed by a rare Leviathan disease and being pursued by Peacekeepers, Moya is forced to take cover in a mysterious nebula. But as her symptoms worsen, the crew begin to experience strange phenomena all over the ship. Are they connected with Moya's ailment? Or are they something stranger still?   
**Setting: **Between "Different Destinations" and "Eat Me"   
**Spoilers:** "Liars, Guns and Money"; "Self Inflicted Wounds"   
**Disclaimer:** Farscape and all its characters and settings are © the Jim Henson Company. Please don't sue me for using them.

**Part One - Tempus Fractus**

It hangs there in space - serene and alien, an artist's palette of colours and shades, ever changing and ever beautiful. Superficially, it appears to be nothing more than an immense cloud of gas - a witches' brew of exotic, toxic chemicals that blazes a multitude of vivid hues - stunning, perhaps, but not hazardous. But beneath the beauty, beneath the veneer of vibrant colours, hides a destructive secret.   
Look closer, and you will see the victims of this enthralling, deadly phenomenon. Like an insect trapped in a spider's web, they struggle to escape, but to no avail. Their ship is injured and afraid, ensnared like a bacterium in the amoebic mass of the nebula, and like any panicked creature, it tries to flee. It flares blue-white, a jumbled tracery of light that glows brighter and brighter until the brilliance around it is outshone for an instant by the flash that surges outward. The light flares so bright that for a moment it obscures everything, a tide of energy that cleanses the void, erasing all sign of the ship and its occupants. When the flash dies away, they are gone. Nothing remains - not even memory... 

John Crichton stepped out of his quarters feeling unusually cheerful. There was a strange feeling at the back of his mind, prodding at his thoughts like a memory trying to make itself heard, but he ignored it. If it was important, he would remember what it was. He strolled jauntily down the corridor, whistling a song that none of his shipmates would have recognised. Indeed, even someone from Earth would have been hard-pressed to identify it, but even his musical ineptitude couldn't dampen his irrationally joyful mood. His contentment lasted about thirty microts. An industrious DRD scuttled out of an intersection just as he was passing, and before he could help himself, he had stubbed a toe on it and tripped. The Drone scurried away, as John fell sprawling to the ground. It chittered an incomprehensible rebuke, then gave a little electronic squeal of terror as the former astronaut swung a fist at it. Still emitting a series of chastising beeps, it scooted off down the corridor.   
His high spirits dampened by the encounter, John pulled himself up into a sitting position. As he did so, he became aware of quiet laughter from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. As he did so, the sound stopped.   
"Honestly, Crichton," Rygel reproved, mockingly, "you should have better things to do than lounge around on the floor all day." The pint-sized alien was obviously struggling to speak around his suppressed mirth.   
"Actually, Sparky," John answered, getting up slowly, "it's quite relaxing." There was a note of forced calm in his voice that should have alerted Rygel, but the diminutive Dominar ignored it. Abruptly, annoyance and anger surged into the Human's tone. "Perhaps you should try it!" With this, Crichton leaped at the Hynerian, his fingers gripping the edge of the alien's hovering ThroneSled. Rygel cried out as John's added weight pulled the front of the floating throne downwards. For a moment the undersized alien was balanced, precariously, on the edge of his royal seat. Then suddenly, the extra load became too much. The ThroneSled tilted; Rygel's arms flailed wildly; John held on; and the irksome Hynerian dropped, unceremoniously, to the ground.   
Standing up, and ignoring Rygel's outraged protestations, John brushed off his hands, and resumed his walk, some of his earlier cheer restored by the Dominar's irate tirade of insults and wounded pride. As the Hynerian's objections faded from hearing, Crichton tapped his communicator.   
"Pilot - you there?"   
"What is it, Commander?"   
"Would you mind telling your DRDs to slow down a little?" John asked, his tone only vaguely irritated now. "One of the frellin' things just ran into me." There was a short silence, and then Pilot's voice, sounding puzzled.   
"Commander Crichton - there _are_ no DRDs in your area." Crichton frowned.   
"Don't give me that, I just ran into one," he shot back. "And I've got the bruises to prove it." There was another, longer pause.   
"Moya isn't detecting any DRDs in your area," Pilot insisted. "However, several of them _are_... missing." His voice sounded halfway between bemused and uneasy. "One of them _was_ last detected near your position."   
"What d'you mean, missing?" There was another hiatus before Pilot replied.   
"Moya is not detecting them at all," he said, sounding more and more troubled.   
"I'll keep an eye out for 'em," John told the other, although how Pilot distinguished one DRD from another, he didn't know. As he made his way down the corridor, D'Argo appeared at an intersection and fell into step beside him, slowing his long strides to match the Human's shorter legs.   
"John - what in hezmana is going on?" he demanded. "One of those frelling DRD just tried to steal my Qualta blade."   
"Pilot says he's lost contact with some of the DRDs," John explained. D'Argo gave a snort.   
"He has _certainly_ lost contact with that one," the Luxan said, a hint of vengeful satisfaction in his tone. "It's lying on the floor of my quarters in pieces." However, before he could continue, Pilot's voice cut in, over the communicators.   
"I'm sorry to interrupt," he informed them, "but we have a problem." John's heart sank, and the uneasy feeling at the back of his mind returned. "Moya has just detected Peacekeeper signatures at the edge of her sense horizon," Pilot continued.   
"Have they spotted us yet?" D'Argo snapped.   
"I don't think so, Ka D'Argo," Pilot responded, uncertainly. "However, they _are_ heading in our direction."   
"Frell." The Luxan's comment summed up the situation pretty well as far as Crichton was concerned.   
"We'd better get to Command," he suggested, and D'Argo nodded. The two of them set off at a run. 

They arrived in Command along with Jool and Stark, with Rygel hovering along as fast as he could behind them, to see the image of Pilot's grey-blue head splashed across the clamshell-shaped display screen. Before they could speak, however, the silence was broken by a chitter of electronic terror.   
A microt later, a DRD scuttled into the Command with a panicked scream, followed closely by Chiana. Like a hunter in pursuit of its prey, the young Nebari charged across the bay, herding the DRD into a smaller and smaller space. The Drone reached the junction between two consoles, and found itself backed into a corner. A triumphant grin lit up Chiana's pallid features.   
"Gotcha!" she exclaimed. She reached down to grab the recalcitrant DRD, but the diminutive robot was not about to give up. Extending one of its many appendages, it prodded Chiana's finger. The Nebari leaped back, with a squeal of pain. "You little..." Seeing its chance, the DRD scuttled between Chiana's feet, and with a triumphant chirp, motored off down the corridor. Infuriated, she glared up at Pilot's image on the screen.   
"Pilot - one of your frelling DRDs just tried to weld my finger!" she complained.   
"They are not _my_ DRDs, Chiana," Pilot told her, a little stuffily. "They appear to be operating independently of Moya's influence." Chiana frowned.   
"I thought they couldn't do that," she said, warily.   
"It appears that Moya is having... some difficulty in controlling them," Pilot answered. His tone sounded exasperated, but John guessed that the subject of the alien navigator's displeasure was not the Nebari, but his own inability to discern to source of the problem. "I am... not certain why." Chiana turned to the others.   
"Great," she said, sarcastically, but no one seemed inclined to care.   
"Frell the DRDs," Rygel snapped. "What about those Peacekeepers?"   
"They are still headed in our direction," Pilot answered him, testily.   
"I say we just StarBurst the hezmana out of here," D'Argo declared, but Pilot shook his carapace-crowned head.   
"Moya is currently... unable to StarBurst," he said, apologetically. "I am still trying to ascertain the cause."   
"Unable to StarBurst?" There was a hint of apprehension in Stark's voice, and his one eye gazed uneasily at Pilot's grainy image. Crichton said nothing - he was getting the strangest feeling that he had seen all this before somewhere. The feeling became even stronger when he looked over his shoulder, and saw Aeryn storming into Command. An expression of irritation simmered on her face.   
"What the frell is going on?" she demanded, and John blinked in surprise - somehow, he'd been expecting her to say that.   
"Whoa - déjà vu," he muttered to himself.   
"Pilot has just detected a Peacekeeper taskforce pursuing us," D'Argo explained tersely, but before he could add anything else, Aeryn's gaze lighted on the sensor display.   
"That's a Peacekeeper retrieval team," she remarked, sounding puzzled. "What would they be doing in the Uncharted Territories?"   
"Who the yotz cares?" Rygel demanded, irritably. "How are we going to get away from them?"   
"Can't we just StarBurst?" Aeryn inquired. Pilot looked slightly put out.   
"Moya is not able to perform StarBurst at this time," he reiterated, stiffly. Aeryn's expression soured further.   
"First, my communicator goes missing," she said, sounding annoyed, "then the temperature in my quarters suddenly drops to freezing, and now we can't StarBurst. Pilot - what's going on?"   
"I'm... not certain, Officer Sun," Pilot answered, haltingly. "It seems that several of Moya's systems are malfunctioning, including life-support, StarBurst - and the DRDs."   
"OK, Pilot," Crichton cut in, "here's the sixty-four thousand dollar question - why?" There was a long pause from the other end of the comm.   
"I am... still not certain," came the eventual response. "However, I am beginning to suspect that Moya has contracted some kind of disease."   
"Disease?" Rygel sounded incredulous. "What sort of disease?"   
"And how would Moya catch a disease?" Stark added.   
"I'm not sure," Pilot answered, "but it _would_ explain why so many systems are not functioning properly. She may have picked it up from the supplies we brought on board at that Commerce Station."   
"Could the disease be dangerous to Moya?" Aeryn asked, concernedly.   
"Or dangerous to us?" Rygel added.   
"I do not think so, Rygel," Pilot replied, slowly. "Most Leviathan viruses are not transmissible to other species."   
"So, what, Moya's got the 'flu?" John sounded incredulous.   
"I do not know what this 'flew' is, Commander Crichton," Pilot told the Human, hesitantly, "but I believe that I _have_ made a diagnosis. It seems that Moya may be suffering from Amnexial Paraiasis."   
"Amnexial what?" D'Argo demanded.   
"Amnexial Paraiasis," Jool repeated, slowly, as though she were explaining something to a child. "It's a malady that affects a Leviathan's Amnexus System."   
"Hey - I didn't know you knew about Leviathan biology." John sounded surprised, but the Interon woman gave him a scathing glare.   
"One of the many things you didn't know," she told him, scornfully. "Amnexial Paraiasis isn't fatal, but it can cause the host entity to lose certain neural functions. It can also linger for some time."   
"How much time?" John enquired, urgently. "Are we talking arns, solar days?" There was a pause, and for once, Jool looked a little uncomfortable, as if she were the bearer of bad news.   
"Sometimes the disease can last for over half a cycle," she announced, baldly. All eyes in the Command fixed on Jool. Stark and Rygel both stared at her in open horror, and Crichton gave her a shocked look.   
"We can't go that long without StarBurst," Aeryn pointed out, a grim note in her voice. "Especially not with that retrieval team hanging around."   
"Don't worry about _that_," Jool said, not very reassuringly. "I can easily synthesise an antibody that will destroy the virus."   
"We still need a way to hide from those Peacekeepers until you find a cure for this Amnexi... whatever-it-is," Chiana put in. Pilot nodded.   
"Moya's sensors are picking up a large nebula only a few zacrons from here," he reported. "It should be dense enough to hide us from the Peacekeeper scans." John looked across the table at the others. D'Argo and Aeryn nodded. Stark shrugged, and Crichton took that as an agreement from the former Banik slave.   
"Go for it, Pilot," he said. 

The nebula filled the viewscreen, a riot of swirling pastel colours broken by splashes of vibrant gold, green, silver, blue, and a myriad other shades. The smooth, organic shapes glittered and shimmered in the faint starlight, rearing far off into the distance. As he stared at it, John found its majestic, alien beauty strangely, disturbingly familiar. The uneasy feeling that had been gnawing at him all day was beginning to grow steadily stronger, and it had nothing to do with the increasingly erratic behaviour of the DRDs, or the maddening glitches in Moya's systems that had become all the more frequent in the past few arns. Something was wrong... very wrong. He just couldn't put his finger on what it was.   
"Beautiful, isn't it John." Startled, Crichton turned to see Scorpius standing beside him, staring into the multi-hued miasma. The half-Scarran smiled infuriatingly. "It seems so alien, so otherworldly," he went on, softly, tauntingly. "And yet somehow, strangely familiar."   
"Shut up, Scorpy." Despite his half-hearted rejoinder, John had a disturbing feeling that Scorpius was right - it _did_ seem familiar somehow, and yet the former astronaut was sure that he'd never seen anything like this before. Still, as he gazed out on the jumbled mass of shifting forms and hues, he was almost certain he'd seen it somewhere else.   
"Hey, John." Crichton turned, to see Chiana enter the Command. She walked over to him, and stood beside him for a moment, looking out into the nebula. After a few microts of silence, she said, "That thing gives me the junteks." John looked at her, noticed how on-edge she was - even more so than usual.   
"You can feel it too?" he asked, surprise evident in his tone. There was no answer - the monochrome-skinned Nebari simply went on gazing into the distance, a far-off look in her eyes. Crichton reached out to wave a hand in front of her face, but he suddenly found it difficult to move his arm. It was like he was trying to move it through treacle. The air shimmered, like a heat-haze hovering around his elbow. Disturbed, John tried to pull his arm away. Slowly, his limb responded, drawing back sluggishly until, with a barely-audible _pop_, it broke through the wall of... whatever it was. Crichton stared for a moment at the strange column or bubble of dancing air that seemed to centre on Chiana. Then he looked down at his hand, then back up at Chiana again.   
Ever so slowly, the Nebari raised her own hand, her face contorting into an expression of pleading, but almost as if in slow-motion. Lethargically, Chiana reached out towards John. Then, abruptly, her grey-tinged hand broke through the intangible barrier between them. Crichton grasped it, and noticed with surprise how cold it felt. Interpreting her gesture as a call for help, and seeing the expression frozen on her face, he braced himself, and pulled. Slowly, henta by henta, the Nebari was dragged forwards. As more and more of her arm was freed from her ethereal imprisonment, the task became easier and easier, until eventually, Chiana burst through the barrier and sprawled on the deck. John hauled her to her feet. Before either of them could say a word, Pilot's carapace-crowned head appeared on the clamshell-shaped viewscreen.   
"Chiana; Commander Crichton - are you alright?" he demanded, sounding shocked and concerned. "Moya just registered a massive energy surge in your area."   
"We're OK," John told him, still sounding dazed. "What happened?"   
"I am not... certain," Pilot answered, haltingly, his voice breaking as he spoke.   
"Pilot?" Chiana's voice sounded even more nervous now. "What's wrong - are you hurt?"   
"I am not... physically injured," the carapace-headed alien replied, from between gritted... teeth, John supposed, but he had learned not to jump to conclusions in matters of alien anatomy. "It's just that... Moya's Amnexial Paraiasis is... worsening rapidly. I am... beginning to lose my... contact with her." 

In the open space at the centre of one of the cargo bays, D'Argo was practicing with his Qualta blade. As Aeryn looked on, the Luxan warrior twirled the fearsome weapon easily in a firm, two-handed grip, weaving it through an increasingly complex pattern. As he pirouetted and whirled, dancing his dance of death, steam hissed from his mouth and nostrils - the temperature in the bay had dropped so low that Aeryn had to pull her jacket around herself to keep from shivering. Even so, sweat stood out on D'Argo's brow as he slashed and stabbed. The exercise seemed to involve fighting off a series of invisible enemies, and from what Aeryn could make out, these intangible warriors attacked with progressively greater ferocity. The technique reminded her of a Peacekeeper training procedure designed to hone muscle control and combat skills. The Luxan certainly seemed to be honing _his_ muscle control - his movements were becoming faster and faster, and yet he retained his henta-perfect precision. The blade flashed like a whirlwind of silver death. As the cadence of D'Argo's imaginary battle reached a frenetic pace, however, Aeryn began to realise that something was wrong. The Luxan warrior's motions became more and more rapid, transforming his Qualta into a metallic blur. As Aeryn looked on, her shock riveting her to the spot, D'Argo stopped. In a final movement, almost faster than her eyes could follow, he slid his weapon back into the sheath that hung across his back, and stepped forward.   
Something rippled in the air for a moment, like the afterimage of the Luxan's flashing blade. Aeryn shivered, and she knew that it was not because of the icy chill that hung in the air. Then her attention was drawn back to the alien warrior.   
"You've been standing there watching me for over half an arn," he snapped, somewhat to her surprise. "Don't you have anything better to do?" Biting back a cutting reply, Aeryn frowned.   
"Half an arn?" she repeated, incredulously. "More like about 30 microts."   
"30 microts?" D'Argo sounded vaguely offended. "I just practiced the Qu'ala pattern, and you watched me the entire time." Still struggling to control the urge to snap back an angry response, Aeryn tried to reason with the Luxan.   
"You _were_ moving pretty fast," she conceded, "but..."   
"Ka D'Argo; Officer Sun." Pilot's concerned voice cut off whatever the former Peacekeeper would have said. "Moya has... just detected another... large energy surge in your area," he continued, trying with stoicism to hide any signs of pain in his tone. "Are you alright?"   
"We're fine, Pilot," Aeryn answered, before D'Argo cut in,   
"What do you mean, _another_ energy surge?"   
"Moya detected... another, almost identical... surge a few microts ago... in the Command... where Chiana and... Commander Crichton are," Pilot explained. His voice shook slightly as he spoke, and as he finished, he gave a muffled gasp of agony.   
"Pilot - are you alright?" Aeryn sounded genuinely concerned for the alien navigator.   
"Moya is... in pain," Pilot told her, with difficulty. "And my... connection to her is... weakening. The Amnexial... Paraiasis is worsening... rapidly."   
"I thought Jool could cure it," D'Argo said, sounding irritated.   
"She says she is... ready to inject the... antibodies into Moya's... Amnexus system... now," Pilot managed. He sounded breathless and his speech was pained, as though he was struggling to maintain his self-control.   
"Then I wish she'd get on with it," the Luxan snapped. Aeryn rounded on him.   
"She's doing the best she can," she told him, her voice hard as steel and colder than the freezing air. "I don't notice you doing anything useful." The Luxan snarled, but before he could react to the ex-Peacekeeper's cutting remark, the entire room shuddered. The lights went dark, and a low rumble filled the air. A throbbing vibration rattled the bulkheads, and sent cargo crates tumbling to the deck. An instant later, the tremor stopped. The low growl was replaced by silence - a silence so complete, it seemed as though death hung in the air.   
"What the frell was that?" D'Argo demanded, sounding shaken but trying to hide it under his veneer of masculine courage. Static hissed through his communicator. Frowning, Aeryn tried hers. Nothing.   
"I don't know," she answered him, dubiously. " I don't know..." 

In the Command, alone now that Chiana had left, John felt the deck beneath him shiver. The almost imperceptible motion set something tingling in the back of his mind like an alarm bell, and the former astronaut, who had long ago learned not to question such subconscious warnings, braced himself against a bronze-coloured bulkhead. Even so, when the shock came, he was unprepared for the sudden power of it. It was as if Moya had run straight into a brick wall - he was thrown to the deck, inertia and thwarted momentum sending him sprawling on his face in the sudden darkness. His head hit something hard, snapping his teeth together with a sickening crack, and he tasted bitter, iron-hot blood in his mouth, felt a lance of pain stab through his tongue. Muscles tense, ready to react to any aftershocks, he levered himself slowly up onto his elbows. He paused there for a moment, listening. What he heard was not encouraging - the still air was filled with a low, creaking moan, a pained sound like the dying gasp of some strange metallic creature.   
"Ah... Pilot - what's goin' on?" Crichton asked, tentatively, massaging his aching jaw. There was no response. "Pilot?" Louder this time, but still no reply. John shook his head - _damn. Comm system must be out_. Carefully, he crawled across to the exit. As he did so, Moya shook again - less strongly this time, but still enough to make Crichton lose his balance. He reached out a hand to steady himself, and came into contact with something soft and yielding. Abruptly, something hard clamped around his fingers. John dropped to the ground. With his free hand, he yanked the gun from the holster at his hip. He was about to use it to forcibly dislodge whatever it was that was grasping his hand so painfully, when the pressure was suddenly released. There was a muffled sound, then a familiar voice exclaimed,   
"Eurgh! You taste like a rotten trat." Crichton holstered his gun again, relieved and angry at the same time.   
"Rygel, next time you bite me like that, I'm gonna kick your little ass all the way to Hyneria." The alien Dominar gave a snort.   
"You shouldn't have tried to flatten me, you great oaf," he riposted, haughtily.   
"Look, Buckwheat, if it weren't so dark in here I wouldn't have gone anywhere _near_ you," John shot back. "Now I'm gonna need a rabies shot."   
"Oh, stop moaning and just get us out of here, you stupid Human." Rygel pronounced the last word as if it were the most heinous insult imaginable. Warily, and trying to ignore the irksome Hynerian, Crichton stood. His fingers still stung, his tongue and jaw ached, and as he got up, he discovered that he'd also managed to pull a muscle in his left leg. The only positive thing was that his eyes had finally adjusted to the gloom, so that instead of total darkness, he could discern a faint shadowing of black against the lighter grey of the background. The lumpy, muttering shape at his feet, he decided, had to be Rygel; the regular, sharp-edged shadow in front of him, the control console; the thin arc of pale luminescence in front of him, the hatch that led out of the Command. Hands extended in front of him, he began to make his way tentatively towards the dim, crescent-shaped glow. When he reached the hatch, his first instinct was to try to lever the immense metal portal open, but when he wrapped his fingers around the cold edge of the door, he found that it wouldn't budge. Straining, he tried harder.   
"Come on, Crichton!" Rygel urged, irritably. Giving up on the brute force approach, John appraised the curved opening.   
"Hey Sparky," he called, in a tone dripping with false camaraderie. "Come over here a minute, wouldya?"   
"Why should I?" the Hynerian demanded, arrogantly. "I am Rygel the Sixteenth, Dominar of a thousand worlds..."   
"The get your ass over here, _Your Majesty_," John retorted, sarcastically. The diminutive alien gave a snort of disgust.   
"I will not be spoken to..."   
"Ah, can it Sparky," Crichton interrupted. "I'll do it myself." Exhaling hard to drive the breath from his lungs, he slipped into the crescent gap. It was awkward, and for a moment, he was held between door and frame in a vicelike grip that crushed down on his ribs, but then he had wriggled past and out of the Command. _Thank God food cubes aren't fattening_. Paying no attention to Rygel's indignant blustering, he stared down the darkened corridor, gazing into the murky shadows that seemed to fill the rapidly cooling air with menace. Abruptly, the lights flickered and pulsed. For a moment, they blazed back into life, sending bronzed highlights coursing along the walls of the hallway. The lights flared, brighter and brighter, then suddenly, one by one, winked out. In front of him, John saw a shimmering in the air, a mounting blue-white glow... and then, abruptly, an explosion of smoke and silver fire. Gradually, elegantly, a fountain of sparks leaped outward, flowing from the heart of the eruption with torpid grace. John stared. The hairs on the back of his neck began to tingle, and he watched in amazement as the slow-motion drama unfolded before his eyes. The cascade of tiny, glaring-white fragments was tumbling towards the deck, but slowly, ever so slowly. As he watched, the first minute embers reached the floor, sagging to the chill metal without a sound, sending up a thin wisp of lethargic grey smoke that curled around itself like a twisting snake. The air rippled, and Crichton heard a burst of noise - a high-pitched sizzle like the sound of electricity arcing across a gap. He reached out a hand, and felt something resist for a moment. The air rippled again, a mirage of concentric wavelets, spreading out as if someone had dropped a stone into a pond, or like the distorting effect of a heat-haze. Cautiously, the former astronaut leaned forward, pushing his face through the intangible barrier. The cascade of sparks leaped into action. They no longer hung gracefully in midair, tumbling unhurriedly downwards - instead, the shower of glowing particles dropped rapidly, hitting the deck with a hiss and sending up a cloud of smoke and steam. Puzzled, John pulled his head back, dragging himself forcefully out of the strange, ethereal rippling membrane. The sparks slowed instantly, arrested in mid-fall. Crichton stared for a moment, then, steeling himself, plunged through the barrier. The sparks resumed their swift descent.   
"_Twilight Zone_, eat your heart out," he commented aloud.   
"Fascinating." At the sound of the familiar voice, John whirled. Leaning on the bulkhead behind him, Scorpius grinned infuriatingly. "I'm glad you took the time to watch that." Crichton turned his back.   
"Shut up Scorpy," he said, in a weary, long-suffering voice. "You're not real anyway."   
"What is reality, John? Was what you just saw real? Is any of this 'real'?"   
"Don't go getting all philosophical on me Scorpy," Crichton mocked, but when he looked over his shoulder, there was no one there. The corridor was empty. John shrugged. Voices in his head, Leviathan diseases, weird phenomena, strange sensations of déjà vu... as days aboard Moya went, this one was turning out pretty normal. 

As Chiana made her way down the corridor, the sound of thumping and angry curses drew her attention. Turning the corner, she saw Jool hammering ineffectually on the door to the infirmary, an expression of annoyance on her face. As she watched, the Interon woman kicked the recalcitrant portal venomously. When that provoked no response, she lashed out with a cry of frustration, hitting the door with the ball of her fist. Immediately, she drew back, clutching her bruised hand and moaning in pain. Chiana laughed. Jool rounded on her.   
"I don't see what's so funny," she snapped. "Pilot won't open the door!"   
"I have already... told you - Moya is... losing control of some of her... systems." Even over the comm, Pilot sounded harassed and impatient. "I could not... open that door... even if I wanted to."   
"I could," Chiana said, brightly. Jool looked at her with something close to distaste.   
"I don't believe you," she told the Nebari, flatly.   
"Then watch and learn." Chiana opened a panel on the wall next to the infirmary door, and fiddled about for a moment. Triumphantly, she touched one wire to another. The door ground open, and Chiana grinned infuriatingly. "Told you," she said, impishly. Jool shook her head, and stepped into what had once been Zhaan's apothecary. Peering into the viewer that was set up on one of the benches, she nodded.   
"The bacteria have multiplied enough to inject the vaccine into Moya," she asserted. Picking up a long, brushed-chrome canister, she slid it into an immense, cylindrical device that looked somewhat like a very large syringe. She inserted the end of the object into a cavity in the bulkhead, touched a control. With a hiss, it discharged its contents into Moya's Amnexus system. Jool looked pleased. "Moya's Amnexial Paraiasis should be cured within an arn," she said, proudly. Chiana shot her a mischievous grin.   
"Good for you," she commented. "Bye." And with that, she pulled two contacts apart. The infirmary door rotated closed. As muffled hammerings began to emerge from the other side of the portal, Chiana doubled over with laughter. 

"I have... already told you, Moya... cannot StarBurst until... Jool's vaccine has eliminated the Amnexial... Paraiasis." Surrounded by D'Argo and Aeryn on one side, and Rygel, John and Stark on the other, Pilot seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Anger and pain added a strained, halting quality to his words, and his movements seemed awkward and uncoordinated. His normally elegant limbs seemed limp and unwieldy, and his head hung low, resting on his chest. His eyes were dull, his skin a paler, more sickly hue than its usual slate-grey, and his entire manner was weak and lethargic. "And in... any case," he continued, "it may... not be wise... to attempt StarBurst until we can... determine the... source of these... energy surges. We must... exercise caution."   
"Caution," D'Argo echoed, scornfully. "If we hadn't exercised 'caution' and hidden in this frelling nebula, we wouldn't be dead in space and unable to StarBurst."   
"No, Pilot's right," Aeryn argued. "We don't know what's causing these energy surges, and we don't know whether or not it's related to these strange... what did he call them? 'Dislocations'?"   
"I know what's causing the energy surges," Stark said, matter-of-factly, but his voice was drowned out by D'Argo's angry response.   
"What 'dislocations'?" he demanded.   
"They appear... to be some kind of... temporal... discontinuity," Pilot reported, hesitantly. "They may be... being caused by... this nebula." Rygel looked sceptical.   
"Either that, or they're caused by someone chewing too many morna lobes," he suggested.   
"Whoah, just wait up a microt." John sounded confused. "What the heck are 'temporal discontinuities'?"   
"They're..." Stark began to explain, but before he could begin, Aeryn interrupted him.   
"We've been seeing them all over the ship," she told Crichton, shortly. "They slow down time, or speed it up, or frell with it in some way."   
"Whatever they are, I say we StarBurst out of here as soon as Jool's vaccine has cured Moya." John had to admit, D'Argo had a way of staying on a particular subject that was impossible to deflect.   
"For once, I agree with the Luxan brute," Rygel contributed.   
"Well I don't." Aeryn sounded more than a little angry, frustration curling her hands into fists.   
"Shut up!" Stark's voice was louder now, but D'Argo ignored him.   
"So, you think we should just go along with whatever you tell us," the Luxan fumed. "Typical Peacekeeper arrogance." With what seemed like a Herculean effort, Pilot pushed aside his weakness. He raised his head and glared at D'Argo.   
"Officer Sun is... only trying to... ensure that Moya..."   
"Keep out of this, Pilot," the alien warrior snapped. Stark shook his head.   
"Shut up!" he cried, pleadingly, raising his voice above the sudden babble of angry voices. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!" Silence fell. Everyone present turned to stare at him.   
"Hey, simmer down, Astroboy..." John said placatingly, but the Banik continued, as if he hadn't heard him.   
"This arguing is pointless!" There was a slightly manic look in the baleful stare of his one eye. "Moya cannot move. She is trapped by these dislocations."   
"How?" D'Argo demanded. "Why is she trapped?"   
"The dislocations mark the boundaries between timescales," Stark explained, not very enlighteningly. "On either side of them, time runs at different speeds. Slow time, fast time, slow time, fast time, all... jumbled together."   
"Yes..." Pilot sounded as though understanding was beginning to dawn, although in John's thoughts, the darkness of confusion still dominated. "When Moya... moves, different... parts of her have different... momentum."   
"Exactly!" Stark exclaimed, grateful that at least _someone_ understood what he was saying. "Moya is trapped amid the dislocations. She's being pulled in all different ways - slow time, fast time." The former slave gestured wildly to illustrate his point. "Slow time fast time slow time fast time slow time fast time slow time fast time - it's tearing her apart!" The anguish in his tone was second only to Pilot's. Remembering his behaviour in the cell on Scorpius's Gamak Base, Crichton edged away. Rygel gave the Banik a sideways look- a look that he had often directed at Crichton - as if he doubted his sanity. D'Argo, as always, was less subtle.   
"Stop talking dren," he told Stark, flatly. "The only thing wrong with Moya is she's suffering from Amnexial..."   
"Paraiasis," Pilot supplied, tersely.   
"It's not dren!" Stark protested. "I can _see_ them! I can see the dislocations."   
"What?" John and Aeryn demanded, simultaneously.   
"I can _see_ the dislocations," Stark repeated. His gestures were becoming more exaggerated, his movements more erratic by the moment. "They're like cracks - cracks in the fabric of space and time!"   
"The only cracks around here..." Rygel began, but before he could continue, John clamped a hand over his mouth. Mindful of his earlier encounter with the diminutive Dominar, he made certain that his grip was firm enough to prevent the Hynerian from biting him. Over the sound of Rygel's furious, inchoate protests, Crichton said,   
"Cracks..." His thoughtful tone brought a look of apprehension from Aeryn.   
"John, whatever it is you're thinking," she advised, "forget it."   
"Maybe we could escape that way," he continued, as if he hadn't heard her. "Y'know - slide through the cracks." Aeryn shot him a look of contempt.   
"John, of all your stupid ideas, that has to be the stupidest."   
"And that's saying something," Rygel remarked, wriggling out of Crichton's muffling grasp.   
"It's not as simple as that..." Stark put in, more tactfully, but Pilot interrupted him with a weary shake of his immense head.   
"I believe... it could be," he said. "If we could... align Moya's insertion... vector with one of the... dislocations, we could... StarBurst... away." There was silence for a moment, as John regarded the others with a superior smile. "However," Pilot continued, and here a note of contrition crept into his pained voice, "Moya is... damaged... wounded. She requires... repairs and... many of my DRDs are... not functioning."   
"We'll get onto it immediately," D'Argo asserted. John nodded.   
"Sounds good to me," he agreed, hiding his sudden apprehension. Somehow, he knew that _something_ was wrong... or that something was about to go wrong. The feeling was elusive, like an itch that couldn't be scratched, but as time went on, it was becoming stronger and stronger. _I just hope I figure out what it means_, Crichton thought. _Before it's too late_... 

It was deadly silent outside Moya's transport hangar, and the gloom cloaked every corner in murky grey-black. Silently thankful for the shroud of darkness, Chiana slipped through the doorway and into the vast, cold hangar. The vaulted ceiling was invisible in the shadows; the transport pods were nothing more than sharp-edged silhouettes, Crichton's module a smooth lump of obsidian-black punctuated by a thin line of reflected light. Creeping forward without a sound, the young Nebari crouched in the cover of a stack of cargo crates. She held her breath, listening intently, heard nothing. Abruptly, a noise shattered the stillness.   
"Looking for something to snurch?" Rygel's voice sounded impossibly loud in the immense, echoing hangar.   
"What is it to you?" Chiana demanded, in a defensive half-whisper.   
"I know why you're here," the Hynerian told her, conspiratorially.   
"I just want to take a look at that ship D'Argo found in the wreckage of that Commerce Station." The Nebari's ingenuous denial convinced Rygel that he was right.   
"I don't believe a word of it," he revealed. Chiana, realising that the Hynerian had seen straight through her blatant fabrication, tried another tack.   
"Well, what are you here for?" she asked, slyly.   
"Moya's frelled," Rygel said, succinctly. "And we will be too, if we don't get the yotz out of here."   
"You're going to snurch a transport pod?"   
"Not snurch," Rygel corrected her. "Acquire."   
Together, the two thieves slipped through the darkness towards the bulbous shape of the mysterious ship. In the blackness, however, they failed to see the faint shimmering in the air in front of them, or the way the dust motes hung motionless in the still air. Unheeding of the rippling of the very fabric of space and time, they pushed blithely through the dislocation. To the rest of the crew, several arns passed before Moya's destruction. Rygel and Chiana didn't even have time to scream. 

"OK, Pilot - we've reached the neural cluster." Aeryn's voice was surprisingly steady, considering the fact that, even wrapped in D'Argo's immense cloak, the chill in the air cut to her very bones. Ice crystallised on the silver clouding of her breath, and crackled in her hair as she moved. Long icicles hung in a forest of delicate blue-white witches' fingers that glittered in the torchlight, and a thick rime lined the bulkheads. "John, hold this while I try to find the damaged connections."   
"Easy f-f-f-f-for you to s-s-s-s-say." Crichton shivered convulsively as he spoke. "You're not the one whose fingers are turning into popsicles."   
"Just stop moaning and take the frelling wrench," Aeryn complained. With bad grace, John snatched the tool. The former Peacekeeper sighed, expelling a nebulous cloud of frost-filled air that crackled as it froze. _Humans_. Leaning over the complex, ice-hardened webwork of neural fibres, Aeryn began to systematically inspect each one, checking for damage. Behind her, John dropped the wrench with a clang, and blew frantically on his hands to warm them. Aeryn stopped working.   
"I told you to hold the wrench," she said, flatly.   
"My hands were freezing to it," he told her, from between chattering teeth. "Now I know how Luke Skywalker felt on Hoth."   
"Who?"   
"Ah, forget it." Crichton shook his head, and picked up the wrench again. "You got anything _useful_ I could be doing?"   
"Yes - you can reconnect those caloric veins behind you," Aeryn answered, without looking at him. With another sigh, Crichton turned, walked over to the panel Aeryn had referred to, and flipped it open. _I hate it when she's like this..._   
Ignoring the former astronaut, Aeryn gripped a neural fibre and pulled. However, instead of it disconnecting from its socket, the frost-hardened cable snapped with a brittle _crack_. The former Peacekeeper cursed. Frustrated, she grabbed the remnants of the shattered fibre and gave them a vicious twist. The neural cable broke off with a shattering sound, showering Aeryn with ice from the ceiling above. Shivering and swearing profusely, she threw off the cloak she had wrapped around her. It hit the deck almost completely rigid. Aeryn shuddered again, as a tendril of freezing-cold water trickled down her spine. There was a loud _snap_, and she felt a sharp pain in her scalp. A frozen lock of hair clattered to the floor. Muttering Sebecean curses, she grasped another of the neural fibres.   
Above her head, in the dark, impossibly cold space between Moya's tiers, the air rippled. Where the neural fibres intersected with the dislocation, energy crackled and sizzled, sparks setting the icy air humming. Inside the neurons, electrical signals began to mass at the boundary between timeframes. Electrons struggled to push through from the zone of fast-flowing time below into the sluggish flow above, accumulating like a river behind a dam. And, with the voltage mounting like a river's inexorable power, the slow build-up of energy was becoming more and more dangerous.   
Hearing Aeryn's stream of invective, John turned. He was about to speak, when something caught his attention, driving the words from his brain. Above her head, a blue glow was beginning to build.   
"Pilot - what the frell's goin' on?" he demanded, apprehensively.   
"Moya... is panicking!" Pilot sounded close to panic himself. "She... may attempt... StarBurst!"   
"She can't do that!" John protested, despite all evidence to the contrary. "If she tries to StarBurst now we'll all be toast."   
"My... connection... to her... is weak," Pilot explained, almost frantically, the urgency cutting through the pain in his voice. "I cannot... stop her," he added, with a hint of sadness.   
"Is there any way _we_ can stop her?" D'Argo demanded, over the comm.   
"Yes." The effort required to get out that single word was evident in Pilot's voice. "Disconnect... neural cluster... tier... seven."   
"I got it," John affirmed. At the same moment, he heard a sizzle of energy, accompanied by a low, menacing hum. He turned. The blue glow above Aeryn's head was getting brighter... "Aeryn!" Crichton broke into a run. But as he sprinted towards her, he didn't notice the rippling in the air in front of him, or the patch of glassy ice under his feet. He slipped and plunged headlong into the dislocation. Time slowed down. Aeryn turned, her expression of puzzlement metamorphosing into a mask of agony as the energy that had built up in Moya's neural fibres surged through her body. As John struggled to his feet, he saw her falling slowly, ever so slowly, to the deck. Despairingly, he lunged forward, and caught her as she fell.   
Grief and pain and anger and sorrow surged up inside him. Cradling her limp body in his arms, he looked down at her. Her face was pale, her skin cold, her hair matted with a crystal tracery of ice. Her eyes were rolled up into her head so that only the whites could be seen, and her mouth hung open slightly, a trickle of blood running down her chin. But John saw nothing of this. All he saw was how beautiful she looked.   
"Aeryn," he breathed, pleadingly, as if his anguished whisper could somehow change the horrific thing he had just witnessed. "Aeryn." Gazing down at her, he found that he could find nothing more to say. So he repeated her name again and again, over and over, as if it could bring her back. "Aeryn. Aeryn. Aeryn..." 

In the infirmary, Jool felt the deck shake beneath her feet, saw the sparks erupt from all sides of her, heard the terrible, rising wail of energy like the roar of a wounded beast. Almost paralysed with fear, she had just enough sense to dive for cover, curling into a foetal position underneath a shelf-full of biosamples. When the StarBurst began, Jool started to scream. She screamed uncontrollably, at the top of her voice, as if she would never stop. She screamed in pain; she screamed in anger; she screamed in terror. She was still screaming when she died. 

D'Argo sprinted down one of Moya's darkened, frost-silvered corridors. He could smell the odour of melted insulation and burning flesh, hanging in the air like the scent of death.   
"John?" he demanded, for the hundredth time, into his silent comm. "Pilot? Anyone?" The hiss of static was obscured by the low rumble of energy surging through conduits, the crackle of arcing current, the keening buzz of calorics discharging their powerful, deadly load. Wormlike energy trails skittered and danced down the bulkheads, charring and searing all in their path. As D'Argo rounded the corner, a vicious _crack_ rang out in the chill air. A glowing finger of electricity surged away from the wall.   
The blast caught D'Argo right in the chest, pitching him backwards and slamming him onto the deck. His limbs twitched once, convulsively, and then he was still. The icy cloud of his last breath dissipated slowly in the chill air. 

In the Command, Stark stood calmly amid the destruction. He knew that he had one last task to perform - a final duty before he could leave his corporeal existence and join Zhaan at last. Removing his mask and raising a hand, he began the ritual of death.   
"Noble Moya..." 

In his cavernous Den, Pilot steeled himself for the agony. Pain like nothing he had never known before tore through him. His many limbs trembled, as the snakelike fibres that formed his connection to Moya began to overheat. Lightning bolts hurled themselves across the cavernous space, leaping from bridge to bridge in fantastic, glittering arcs. White-hot anguish burned through Leviathan and Pilot, each feeling the other's suffering in a deadly, lethal symbiosis. In the midst of it all, Pilot threw back his head, and screamed a final, wordless cry of despair and agony. But the stars would not hear him, and the varicoloured beauty of the nebula was cold and uncaring. 

A cyan tracery began to spread across Moya's back, reaching along her spine and down her immense flanks in a glowing pattern of cobalt blue. Tendrils of energy skittered along the Leviathan's gentle curves, like coruscating snakes of glittering azure leaping and writhing against the dull bronze of her hull. The light grew brighter and brighter, swelling and building into a blaze of incandescent glory that swathed the Leviathan's bulk like a silver aura. For a moment, it rivalled even the multitudinous colours of the nebula. Then, it washed outwards, like a wave of pure energy, cleansing the pristine colours of space, burning and searing away imperfections. As it receded, it left nothing behind - not a single piece of charred flesh, nor a single fragment of twisted debris. The nebula was empty. It was as if Moya had never been.

**To be continued...**


	2. Persistence of Vision

**FARSCAPE**

**That Same Old Familiar Feeling**

**Rating: **G   
**Category: **Action   
**Description: **Paralysed by a rare Leviathan disease and being pursued by Peacekeepers, Moya is forced to take cover in a mysterious nebula. But as her symptoms worsen, the crew begin to experience strange phenomena all over the ship. Are they connected with Moya's ailment? Or are they something stranger still?   
**Setting: **Between "Different Destinations" and "Eat Me"   
**Spoilers:** "Die Me Dichotomy"; "Liars, Guns and Money"; "Self Inflicted Wounds"   
**Disclaimer:** Farscape and all its characters and settings are © the Jim Henson Company. Please don't sue me for using them.

**Part Two - Persistence of Vision**

D'Argo awoke suddenly, with the certain knowledge that something was wrong. A feeling of unease prodded at him. _I was dreaming..._ the Luxan tried to remember the dream, but it was already hazy and indistinct in his mind. Broken, disjointed images flashed through his thoughts - Stark, wearing manic expression; Chiana chasing a DRD through the Command; John's face, looking confused _- that doesn't mean anything - John always looks confused_... Then, abruptly, another image, far more disturbing. _Energy crackles down empty corridors - skittering tendrils of blue-white that sizzle and flicker with deadly beauty. Shadows leap and dance in the half-darkness, and the cyan glow glitters off a thick layer of ice that lines the walls with its silver-white crystals. Breath clouds the chill air._   
_ "John? Pilot? Aeryn?" Silence is the only answer. As a burning finger of energy reaches out, time seems to slow. Fear recedes, replaced by calm - the sudden, complete tranquillity that shepherds the certainty of death..._ A grating, scraping sound of metal on metal jolted D'Argo from his disquieting vision. Looking down at the floor of his quarters, his gaze lighted on the silver shape of his Qualta blade. As he watched, the weapon began to move. Henta by henta, the Luxan's prize possession was being dragged away from him by some unseen agency. Angrily, D'Argo reached out to grab the Qualta. However, as he put out a hand, the weapon jerked out of his grasp. Again, D'Argo made a grab for the blade, and again it evaded him. He swore, a blistering Luxan oath. Viciously, he snatched up the weapon. A lone DRD scurried for cover. Caught in the act, and exposed, the thief chittered wildly as D'Argo swung the Qualta over his head.   
Ten microts later, it was all over. Pieces of yellow casing and fragments of electronic circuits lay scattered across the deck. The Drone's innards were broken and twisted, some hanging from the walls like bizarre trophies. In the corner of the room, a single ocular sensor glowed weakly. D'Argo surveyed the scene with satisfaction, but the sensation was tinged with an uneasy foreboding.   
"Frelling DRDs," he muttered, but he couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that a terrible darkness was massing just beyond the periphery of his senses, outside the warm circle of light that described his world. It felt like the long shadow of death reaching out for him, clawing towards him... With an effort, he shook off his morbid train of thought. Superstition ran strong in his Luxan blood, and he had always believed that dreams could bring portents, and foretell the future. But this dream - this nightmare - had seemed so _real_, more like a memory than an omen. For a fraction of a microt, he had _known_ he was going to die. An icy shiver ran down his spine, and for a moment, he thought he could smell a sickening, charnel odour. Then it was gone, and all that remained was a splinter of dread lodged deep in his gut. 

Aeryn awoke, shivering. Her bunk was like a solid brick of ice, and the air felt cold against the bare skin of her arm. Sleepily, she curled into a ball and tried to ignore the biting chill, but it was no use. She felt a twinge of irritation that she knew was a product of her own laxness. As a Peacekeeper, she had been trained to hone her body's rhythms, waking and rising at the same time each day, but in the past cycle she had grown used to sleeping as long as she wanted - a luxury that some glitch in Moya's systems was now depriving her of. She gritted her chattering teeth. Peacekeepers were trained to endure adversity, but her Sebacean body was not equipped to deal with extremes of heat and cold. Still shivering convulsively, she reached for her communicator. Her half-numbed fingers found nothing but icy metal. Fully awake now, she sat up, pulling the covers around herself and scanning the room for the telltale golden glint of the device. It was nowhere to be seen.   
"Frell." Abandoning the idea of remaining in bed, she pulled on her clothes as quickly as possible, her sluggish fingers fumbling clumsily with the fasteners.   
She stepped out of her quarters into the blessed warmth of the corridor, and her irritation returned. She felt a sense of persecution - _why is it only _my_ quarters that feel like they're within five degrees of the Glarion Frost Point?_ It was an irrational emotion, but Aeryn was in an irrational mood this morning, for some reason that her disciplined mind could not grasp. The feeling still burned strong as she strode into the Command. The sight of John, Stark and the rest clustered around the viewscreen only served to augment it - she felt as though she were being left out of something important.   
"What the frell is going on?" she demanded, ignoring the odd look that John gave her.   
"Pilot has just detected a Peacekeeper taskforce pursuing us," D'Argo told her, with typical bluntness. She quickly shifted her attention to the sensor display. The signatures there were easily recognisable, an unmistakeable fingerprint she had committed to memory many Cycles ago. _Eight Prowlers, accompanied by a Pentac-class Vigilante._   
"That's a Peacekeeper retrieval team," she concluded aloud. "What would they be doing in the Uncharted Territories?"   
"Who the yotz cares?" Rygel demanded, irritably. "How are we going to get away from them?"   
"Why can't we just StarBurst?" Aeryn inquired, wondering why she felt as though she should already know the answer. Pilot looked slightly put out.   
"Moya is not able to perform StarBurst at this time," he informed her, stiffly. An unreasoned hint of fear flickered through her mind, but it was quickly submerged by anger.   
"First, my communicator goes missing," she complained, "then the temperature in my quarters suddenly drops to freezing, and now we can't StarBurst. Pilot - what the frell is going on?"   
"I'm... not certain, Officer Sun," Pilot answered, haltingly. "It seems that several of Moya's systems are malfunctioning, including life-support, StarBurst... and the DRDs." Aeryn thought she detected a note of worry in his tone.   
"OK, Pilot," John cut in, "here's the sixty-four thousand dollar question - why?" There was a long pause from the other end of the comm.   
"I am... still not certain," came the eventual response. "However, I am beginning to suspect that Moya has contracted some kind of disease." Aeryn's surprise was tempered by a growing sense of unreality. She glanced at John, who appeared to be staring intently at Stark's left hand.   
"Disease?" Rygel demanded, "What sort of disease?"   
"And how would Moya catch a disease?" Stark added. Aeryn frowned. John seemed to be mouthing something under his breath, but she couldn't make out what.   
"I'm not sure," Pilot said, answering both Stark's and Rygel's questions, "but it _would_ explain why so many systems are not functioning properly. She may have picked it up from the supplies we brought on board at that Commerce Station." At last, the seriousness of the situation snapped Aeryn out her malaise.   
"Could the disease be dangerous to Moya?" she asked, concernedly.   
"Or dangerous to us?" Rygel added, with typically self-centred alarm.   
"I do not think so, Rygel," Pilot replied, slowly, evading Aeryn's question. "Most Leviathan viruses are not transmissible to other species."   
"So, what, Moya's got the 'flu?" John sounded incredulous, and Aeryn guessed that this 'flew' he referred to was some kind of Human disease.   
"I do not know what this 'flew' is, Commander Crichton," Pilot told Crichton, hesitantly, "but I believe that I _have_ made a diagnosis. It seems that Moya may be suffering from Amnexial Paraiasis."   
"Amnexial what?" D'Argo demanded.   
"Amnexial Paraiasis," Jool repeated, slowly, as though she were explaining something to a child. "It's a malady that affects a Leviathan's Amnexus System." John looked as though he were about to say something, but instead, he shook his head, looking puzzled. "It isn't fatal, but it can cause the host entity to lose certain neural functions. It can also linger for some time," Jool went on.   
"How much time?" Aeryn demanded. For some reason, she felt as though the answer were of vital importance. "Are we talking arns, solar days?" There was a pause, and for once, the Interon woman looked a little uncomfortable.   
"Sometimes the disease can last for over half a cycle," she announced. All eyes in the Command fixed on Jool. Stark and Rygel both stared at her in open horror, and Aeryn fixed her with a grim stare.   
"We can't go that long without StarBurst," she pointed out. "Especially not with that retrieval team hanging around."   
"Don't worry about _that_," Jool said, dismissively, not reassuring her in the slightest. "I can easily synthesise an antibody that will destroy the virus."   
"We still need a way to hide from those Peacekeepers..." Chiana put in, sounding uncertain. Pilot nodded.   
"Moya's sensors are picking up a large nebula only a few zacrons from here," he reported. "It should be dense enough to hide us from the Peacekeeper scans." John looked up. The twinge of irrational dread returned to Aeryn's gut, twisting her insides. She tried to ignore it.   
"Is anyone else having bad feeling about this?" Crichton asked, seemingly irrelevantly. Aeryn shook her head.   
"I don't know what you're talking about," she lied. John frowned again.   
"I've been having bad dreams," Stark remarked, in a portentous voice. Rygel gave a snort of disbelief.   
"You probably ate some stale food cubes," he opined, sceptically.   
"No, no, no." The Banik seemed agitated. "You don't understand. I dreamed about Zhaan. She was warning me about... something." Jool shot him a look of total contempt.   
"So, what do we do?" she asked, her voice dripping sarcasm, "Believe Pilot, or listen to Stark's insane ramblings?"   
"I say we ignore the fahrbot and hide in that nebula," Rygel put in, impatiently.   
"For once, Rygel and I agree on something." Aeryn looked up at Pilot.   
"I can see no alternative source of concealment within five thousand metras," he reported. John's expression soured, but he nodded.   
"Okay, go with the nebula," he acquiesced. "Just don't say I didn't warn you." 

Dread assailed Stark as he scurried through the shadows of the darkened corridor. Moya's internal systems were slowly failing, and the darkness was just one symptom - all over the ship, life support was beginning to break down, plunging entire tiers into ice-bound winter and even freezing Moya's Amnexus fluid. Muttering agitatedly to himself, the Banik glanced from side to side.   
"Wrong, wrong, wrong, something's wrong," he mumbled, the echoes turning the sound of his voice into an inchoate drone. "Wrong wrong wrong wrong..." His mouth snapped shut, and he came to an abrupt halt. The air in front of him shimmered. Stark's eye widened - hanging across the corridor was a glittering, phantasmal webwork of golden threads. The softly glowing lines twisted and undulated, shifting and swirling in an ever-changing matrix of gleaming, ethereal fibres. Stark closed his eye. When he opened it again, the golden web was still there. Tentatively, he reached out, but as he touched it, angry red lines rippled through the air, staining it the colour of blood. Alarmed, he pulled his hand back, and the crimson colour receded. The Stykera leaned forward. As his face touched the barrier, he felt a tingling sensation run through his skin, standing his hair on end. He tried to retreat. Vermilion obscured his vision for a moment, then a powerful force took hold of him, sucking him through the shimmering web. His arms flailed wildly before he was dragged through the barrier, emerging on the other side with an audible _pop_. Immediately he was through, he knew something was different.   
"Something's wrong... something's wrong... something's wrong." A furtive movement caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. Nothing stirred. He glanced from side to side, edgily. The shadows remained resolutely motionless. He stole a glance over his shoulder, but the shimmering barrier was all he could see, and beyond that, the empty corridor stretching off into the darkness. Carefully, he turned through three hundred and sixty degrees. When he came back to where he had started, nothing had changed. Somehow, this only made him more nervous. "Something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong," he burbled, anxiously.   
"Stark." At the sound of his name, the Banik stiffened. He spun, trying to locate the source of the whispered summons. "Stark."   
"Who - who's there?" Stark demanded, his one eye roving frantically, searching.   
"Stark." Abruptly, Stark recognised the quiet voice.   
"Zhaan?" A calming presence like a cool breeze whispered through his mind.   
"Yes, Stark." The voice conjoured up vivid images in Stark's mind. A Stykera takes with him a small part of every soul he sends into the next world - now, that part of Zhaan stirred in his memory. It was almost as if the Delvian priestess were standing at his side. "Stark, listen to me." The cyan-skinned Pa'u sounded concerned, her voice full of the calm compassion that Stark remembered so well. "You did not heed my warning." Though there was no censure in her voice, Stark detected a hint of sadness.   
"I tried!" he told her. "They wouldn't listen, they never listen, no one ever listens..."   
"Stark, please - listen to me." The Banik fell silent. "You are in grave danger, Stark. Moya is trapped in a network of temporal dislocations. If she does not escape, you will all perish..." Her voice died away, as if she were fading, drawn away by some otherworldly force.   
"Zhaan!" Stark choked back his pleading cry. Zhaan was gone.   
"Stark..." Her voice breathed softly inside his mind. "Please... heed my warning..." Stark nodded.   
"I will," he muttered to himself. "I will. I will." 

In the open space in the centre of one of the cargo bays, D'Argo raised his Qualta blade. He took a deep breath, pushing his unease aside, and cleared his mind of all distractions. Focusing all his attention on the weapon, he began the Luxan discipline known as the Qu'ala pattern. Bringing the blade around, he blocked the first imaginary attack, sweeping the intangible thrust aside and lashing out with a swift counterattack. The first visualised enemy became a visualised corpse. D'Argo moved through the sequence, merging his movements into one fluid, flowing dance, whirling his sword, feeling his consciousness focus at the tip of the blade. _High block; low block; parry the slash and counter-thrust. Feel your hearts beating - tune yourself to their rhythms. As they pound faster, increase the cadence of the pattern, hacking and twisting, always in balance, always at the edge of control. Sense your enemy - see their attack before it comes, like a finger stretching out... a finger of blue-white energy, crackling with death, surging out towards you... _Angered and momentarily losing concentration, D'Argo swept his blade viciously through the air, cleaving his imagined opponent in two. The momentum of the swing unbalanced him, and he barely brought his Qualta up in time to block the next sequence of attacks. _Sense your enemy - see their attack before it comes, like a finger stretching out towards you. Move and strike, defeating their assault and making your own, defence and attack combined. You are blood, hot with anger; you are water, flowing into and around every stroke, filling the room. You are fire, burning with strength; you are ice, cold and controlled... ice, lining the corridor with glittering crystals like rauliss buds, chilling the air until it boils silver smoke with every breath..._ Distracted, D'Argo stumbled, breaking the precious rhythm of the Qu'ala. Struggling to regain his equilibrium, he traced a graceful s-curve in the air and turned, fending off a flurry of imaginary enemies. The light flashed off his weapon. _You are fire, burning with strength; you are ice, cold and controlled. Defence and attack are one. Minds and body are one. Instinct and consciousness are one. _As he recited the silent mantra, his poise returned. Now he was entering the most challenging phase of the pattern, and the imagined foes quickened the pace of their attacks, hacking and slashing viciously. His blade flashed like a whirlwind of silver death, fending off each assault and striking with practised grace. With a final surge of energy, he plunged his weapon into the final enemy. The pattern was over. He slid his Qualta blade back into its sheath, and turned, to see Aeryn standing there behind him, motionless, staring. _She has been standing there since I began the pattern_, he realised. He stepped forward, not heeding the faint shimmering that rippled the air around him. He felt anger rise up inside him.   
"You've been standing there watching me for over half an arn," he growled. "Don't you have anything better to do?" D'Argo expected Aeryn to snap back an angry reply, but instead, he shot him a puzzled look that began to stir up doubts in his brains.   
"Half an arn?" she repeated, disbelievingly. "More like about 30 microts." The Luxan frowned. Plagued by strange visions he did not understand, and perturbed by his own lack of concentration, he tried, vainly, to bury his uncertainties with more anger.   
"30 microts?" he demanded. "I just practiced the Qu'ala pattern, and you watched me the entire time." For some reason, he felt an irrational urge to lash out, to show the Universe that he was not cowed by anything it could throw at him.   
"You _were_ moving pretty fast," Aeryn conceded, in a controlled tone, "but..."   
"Ka D'Argo; Officer Sun." Pilot's concerned voice cut off whatever the former Peacekeeper would have said. "Moya has... just detected another... large energy surge in your area," he continued. "Are you alright?"   
"We're fine, Pilot," Aeryn answered. His ire not diffused, only redirected, D'Argo turned on Pilot.   
"What do you mean, _another_ energy surge?" he snapped.   
"Moya detected... another, almost identical... surge a few microts ago... in the Command... where Chiana and... Commander Crichton are," Pilot explained. His voice shook slightly as he spoke, and as he finished, he gave a muffled gasp of agony.   
"Pilot - are you alright?" Aeryn inquired, with genuine compassion for the alien navigator.   
"Moya is... in pain," Pilot replied, haltingly. "And my... connection to her is... weakening. The Amnexial... Paraiasis is worsening... rapidly."   
"I thought Jool could cure it," the Luxan said, concern for his friend fuelling his growing rage.   
"She says she is... ready to inject the... antibodies into Moya's... Amnexus system... now," Pilot managed.   
"Then I wish she'd get on with it," D'Argo snapped. At this, Aeryn rounded on him, barking the irate response she had clearly been bottling up.   
"She's doing the best she can," she hissed, her voice hard as steel and colder than the freezing air. "I don't notice you doing anything useful." The Luxan warrior snarled, but before he could react, the entire room trembled. The lights darkened, and a low rumble filled the shadow-shrouded air. Cargo crates tumbled to the deck with a thunderous clatter, and the whole room shuddered. An instant later, the tremor stopped. D'Argo shook his head, trying to clear it of the sudden sense of foreboding.   
"What the frell was that?" he demanded, trying to hide the creeping dread that was slowly insinuating itself into his thoughts. Static hissed through his communicator. Frowning, Aeryn tried hers. Nothing.   
"I don't know," she answered him, slowly. " I don't know..." 

As Chiana made her way down the corridor, the sound of thumping and angry curses drew her attention. Turning the corner, she saw Jool hammering ineffectually on the door to the infirmary, an expression of annoyance on her face. As she watched, the Interon woman kicked the recalcitrant portal venomously. When that provoked no response, she lashed out with a cry of frustration, hitting the door with the ball of her fist. Immediately, she drew back, clutching her bruised hand and moaning in pain. Chiana laughed. Jool rounded on her.   
"I don't see what's so funny," she snapped. "Pilot won't open the door!"   
"I have already... told you - Moya is... losing control of some of her... systems." Even over the comm, Pilot sounded harassed and impatient. "I could not... open that door... even if I wanted to."   
"I could," Chiana said, brightly. Jool looked at her with something close to distaste.   
"I don't believe you," she told the Nebari, flatly.   
"Then watch and learn." Chiana opened a panel on the wall next to the infirmary door, and fiddled about for a moment. Triumphantly, she touched one wire to another. The door ground open, and Chiana grinned infuriatingly. "Told you," she said, impishly. Jool shook her head, and stepped into what had once been Zhaan's apothecary. Peering into the viewer that was set up on one of the benches, she nodded.   
"The bacteria have multiplied enough to inject the vaccine into Moya," she asserted. Picking up a long, brushed-chrome canister, she slid it into an immense, cylindrical device that looked somewhat like a very large syringe. She inserted the end of the object into a cavity in the bulkhead, touched a control. With a hiss, it discharged its contents into Moya's Amnexus system. Jool looked pleased. "Moya's Amnexial Paraiasis should be cured within an arn," she said, proudly. Chiana shot her a mischievous grin.   
"Good for you," she commented. "Bye." And with that, she pulled two contacts apart. The infirmary door rotated closed. As muffled hammerings began to emerge from the other side of the portal, Chiana doubled over with laughter. 

D'Argo and Aeryn were the first to arrive in Pilot's den. The many-limbed creature was working like a Bretlik, frantically hammering controls, but to no apparent effect, and two of his multi-jointed arms hung loosely at his sides. For the first time, Aeryn saw a hint of panic in the alien's large eyes.   
"Pilot, what's going on?" she inquired, softly. "Is Moya alright?" Pilot looked up, but the effort seemed to drain him, and his chin sunk back to his chest again.   
"Something has... caused Moya to stop... dead," he reported, shakily. A great, trembling shudder wracked his chitin-covered frame, and as if in sympathy, a tremor rippled through Moya. His limbs straightened convulsively, then slumped, to hang awkwardly by his sides. He seemed close to despair. "I cannot... determine what... it is," he told them, sadly. "Moya's sensors are... not functional." Compassionately, Aeryn reached out and took the alien's clawed hand in her own.   
"We'll find a way out of this," she promised him, firmly.   
"How?" D'Argo demanded, unhelpfully. "We don't even know what 'this' is."   
"I believe I am... beginning to... understand our situation." Aeryn's words seemed to have given Pilot new hope, and there was a new strength in his tone, beneath the pain. "Moya appears... to be trapped... in a network of... temporal... dislocations of some kind."   
"Can she StarBurst out?" Aeryn asked, already fearing that she knew the answer.   
"Not until Jool's... vaccine has... eliminated all traces of... the Amnexial... Paraiasis."   
"So you mean we're stuck here?" Standing at the entrance to the Den, John's voice echoed in the unnatural silence. It sounded strangely loud and hollow, especially in the absence of the familiar pulsing throb of Moya's systems. With Stark and Rygel close behind, he made his way over the wide arc of the connecting bridge, and stood in front of Pilot.   
"What do you mean, stuck?" The Hynerian demanded. "I thought once Jool had injected her whatever-it-is into Moya, we could just StarBurst the juxt out of here." Pilot rolled his eyes weakly.   
"I have... already told you," he reiterated. "Moya... cannot StarBurst until... Jool's vaccine has eliminated the Amnexial... Paraiasis. _Completely_." Rygel looked affronted, but Pilot continued anyway. With each word, his vitality seemed to drain away. "In any... case, it may... not be wise... to attempt StarBurst until we can... determine the... source of these... energy surges. We must... exercise caution."   
"Caution," D'Argo echoed, in a scornful tone. "If we hadn't exercised 'caution' and hidden in this frelling nebula, we wouldn't be dead in space and unable to StarBurst." _And I wouldn't be having these frelling visions_, he added, silently.   
"No, Pilot's right," Aeryn argued, fighting to remain calm. She had the strangest sensation that she had spoken these exact words before. "We don't know what's causing these energy surges, and we don't know whether or not it's related to these strange... what did he call them? 'Dislocations'?"   
"What dislocations?" D'Argo demanded, but John wasn't listening. Despite the Luxan's loud voice, he had distinctly heard Stark say something.   
"Stark - did you just say you know what's causing the surges?" he demanded.   
"Yes!" The Stykera sounded relieved, as if he had been expecting to have to fight to be heard. "I know what's causing the energy surges - it's the dislocations!"   
"If you ask me, the only dislocations around here are in your brain," Rygel jibed.   
"I can _see_ them," Stark insisted, but the Hynerian just laughed.   
"If you ask me," he riposted, "you can see a lot of things that any sane lifeform..." John reached out, but Aeryn pre-empted him, clapping her hand over the diminutive alien's mouth.   
"No one _did_ ask you," she told him, irritably.   
"I was supposed to do that," John muttered, then wondered why he had said it. Aeryn shot him a puzzled glance, but she put it from her mind and returned her attention to the matter in hand.   
"Stark - what is causing these surges?" The Banik looked at Pilot.   
"It's the temporal dislocations," he said, and Pilot nodded, weakly.   
"The dislocations... appear to be some... kind of space-time... discontinuity," he added, completely failing to clarify the situation. John gave him a confused look.   
"Space-time what?"   
"Discontinuities." Stark told him. "They are everywhere - all over Moya."   
"They slow down time," Aeryn elaborated.   
"Or... speed it up," Pilot added.   
"Or frell with it in some other way," Stark put in.   
"Whatever they are, I say we StarBurst out of here as soon as Jool's vaccine has cured Moya," D'Argo stated, demonstrating a particularly Luxan brand of stubbornness. Aeryn was about to reply, when she was distracted by a stabbing pain in her finger. She looked down. Rygel had fastened his teeth into her hand, hard. The former Peacekeeper snatched it away, and Rygel spat, disgustedly.   
"I agree with the Luxan brute," he announced, but before he could go any further, Aeryn's vicious left jab caught him right under the chin. He flopped backwards off his ThroneSled, and his eyes rolled up into his head. She surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction.   
"Well, I don't," she said, sounding pleased with herself. John restrained his desire to applaud, and tried to shrug off his mounting feeling of dread.   
"I don't either," he agreed. "It's too dangerous."   
"Dangerous?" D'Argo sounded mocking, but Pilot fixed him with an angry glare.   
"Officer Sun and... Commander Crichton are... only trying to..."   
"Keep out of this, Pilot," the Luxan snapped. Stark rolled his eye.   
"Shut up!" he pleaded, but D'Argo ignored him.   
"I say we should StarBurst out of this frelling nebula..." he went on. Stark's eye bulged madly.   
"Shut up shut up shut up!" he exploded. "Shut up!" Silence fell, and everyone turned to stare at him. "Shut up," he repeated, quietly.   
"Simmer down..." John began, but stopped in mid-sentence. "Now _that_ is really weird," he remarked, half to himself. Aeryn shot him a bemused look.   
"So is talking to yourself," she pointed out. John looked startled, as if he had forgotten that she was there.   
"Uh... yeah."   
"Why will no one listen to me?" Stark's anguished cry echoed in the chill air. "Moya is _trapped_ - trapped amid the dislocations. She cannot escape, no, no escape, _no escape_..."   
"How is she trapped?" Aeryn asked him, cutting off his mutterings.   
"The dislocations mark the boundaries between timescales," the Banik explained. Aeryn and D'Argo still looked confused, but John nodded.   
"On either side of them, time runs at different speeds," he added, with the relieved air of a man who has finally begun to comprehend what is being said to him.   
"Yes..." Pilot, too, sounded as though he was beginning to understand. "When Moya... moves, different... parts of her have different... momentum."   
"Exactly," Stark and Crichton exclaimed in unison. "Moya is trapped amid the dislocations," the Stykera went on. "She's being pulled in all different ways - slow time, fast time." The former slave gestured wildly. "Slow time fast time slow time fast time slow time fast time slow time fast time - it's tearing her apart!" Aeryn nodded, absently. A thought had materialised at the back of her mind, like a half-forgotten memory. She tried to grasp it, but it slipped away. "If we don't escape, Moya will be ripped to pieces!" Stark continued, in a panicked tone.   
"Stark... is right," Pilot agreed, despairingly. "Cracks... are already beginning... to appear in Moya's... external bulkheads..." _Cracks..._ The word sparked something in Aeryn's brain, and the recalcitrant memory skittered to the forefront. Slowly, she said,   
"What if we could align Moya's insertion vector with one of the dislocations? Could we StarBurst away?" Pilot turned to look at her, but the effort was too great. His massive head sank back down again, but when he spoke, there was new energy in his tone.   
"Yes... I believe it... would be possible..." he managed to tell her.   
"But Moya's heavily damaged," John pointed out. "And her DRDs are all fritzed."   
"That is... correct, Commander... Crichton."   
"We'll begin repairs," D'Argo asserted. John turned to leave, then caught sight of Rygel's unconscious form lying on the deck. He hid a grin.   
"What about Sparky?" he asked, to no one in particular.   
"Leave him here," the Luxan said, shortly. 

It was deadly silent outside Moya's transport hangar, and the gloom shrouded every corner in murky grey-black shadows. Silently thankful for the darkness, Chiana slipped through the doorway and into the vast, cold hangar. Creeping forward without a sound, the young Nebari crouched in the cover of a stack of cargo crates. She held her breath, listening intently.   
A sudden crackling sound shattered the tense silence. Chiana started, glancing around the room, searching frantically for the source of the sudden noise. She saw nothing. Another sharp _crack_ echoed in the darkness. Chiana whirled, but again, there was nothing there. Tentatively, feeling a growing sense of unease, the young Nebari tapped her communicator.   
"Pilot?" There was no answer. "Pilot? You there?"   
Abruptly, there was another sizzle of energy. Chiana saw a flash of white light, a burning wave of radiance so bright she threw up her hand to shield her eyes... then, just as suddenly, the light was gone - and Chiana was running. There was no transition, no sense of acceleration - one moment she was standing, stock-still, in the centre of the hangar bay; the next, she was running. It was like something out of a dream - sprinting down empty, echoing corridors, icy vapour clouding the air with every breath, the cold biting her skin and numbing her fingers, creeping into her muscles like an insidious disease. She was searching frantically, but for what, or for whom, she didn't know. She tried to cry out, but when she opened her mouth no sound emerged, only a cloud of silver steam. All she knew was that she was searching... and that she had to warn someone.   
She could hear something now, a long way off - a stream of muttered curses, muted by distance; then a loud, echoing _snap_. She tried to run faster, to force one last burst of speed out of her aching legs, but as she ran, the voices seemed to recede, obscured by a half-heard humming that quickly built into a crackling, keening wail. A single scream of agony pierced the all-pervading shriek, and Chiana stopped running. She was too late.   
The empty corridors blazed brilliant white, and vanished, leaving Chiana alone in the empty hangar. She shivered, convulsively, and when she put a hand to her face, she found tears there. _What did I just see?_ The vision had terrified her, shaking her already frayed nerves. Abruptly, she realised that she had glimpsed a tiny snatch of the future, and with that realisation came a surge of purpose. _I have to stop it happening again..._

"OK, Pilot - we've reached the neural cluster." Aeryn's voice was surprisingly steady - too steady, in John's opinion. She was wrapped in one of D'Argo's immense, fur-lined cloaks, insulated from the biting cold that seared his fingers and face and turned his breath into a haze of glittering crystals. The only extra clothing Crichton had was his thin IASA flight jacket, which was little proof against the chill. Long icicles hung from the rime-lined bulkheads, and Aeryn's hair crackled as she pulled a long-handled tool of some kind from her belt. She handed it to him. "John, hold this while I try to find the damaged connections," she ordered.   
"Easy f-f-f-f-for you to s-s-s-s-say," Crichton complained. "You're not the one whose fingers are turning into popsicles."   
"Just stop moaning and take the wrench," Aeryn told him, but without rancour, sounding almost thoughtful. John took the tool from her, and she turned back to the complex, ice-hardened webwork of neural fibres. John couldn't see what she was doing, but he was more worried about ensuring that his hands didn't freeze to the handle of the wrench. The cold metal felt oddly familiar in his palm, as if he had held it there before... he shook his head. _This is stupid - of course I've held it before. It's just a wrench._ But somehow, he knew that it wasn't simply that he had held this particular tool before. The whole situation felt familiar... irritated, John tried to shake off the sudden feeling of _déjà vu_. _We've never done this before,_ he reassured himself. _I'd definitely remember if Moya had ever turned into a giant icebox_... Abruptly, he became aware of a tingling sensation in the palm of his hand. He looked down, and realised that he had been holding the wrench in the same hand for at least a minute. His skin was beginning to freeze to the metal. Surprised, John dropped the tool with a clang, and blew frantically on his hands to warm them. Aeryn stopped working, and looked up at him.   
"I told you to hold the wrench," she said, flatly.   
"My hands were freezing to it," he protested, between chattering teeth. "Now I know how Luke Skywalker felt on Hoth."   
"Who?"   
"Ah, forget it." Crichton shook his head, and picked up the wrench again, tentatively. "You got anything _useful_ I could be doing?"   
"Yes - you can reconnect those caloric veins behind you," Aeryn answered, turning back to her work. With a sigh, John, walked over to the panel Aeryn had referred to, and flipped it open. The tangled mass of organic conduits looked strangely familiar, their jumbled curves under a frosting of silvery rime suggesting some kind of pattern, an underlying order that John could sense at the edge of his mind. Snatches of memory tugged at his consciousness. _A voice, chanting strange words... an icy blast of chill air washing over him... a terrible roaring, throbbing sound... Aeryn's face, stiffened into a rictus of death, her black tresses laced with ice crystals, her eyes fixed forever in a glassy, sightless stare. _Crichton's mind snapped back to the present. His first thought was that he was remembering Aeryn's death, and a pang of remorse and anguish stabbed through him as he recalled her lifeless, frozen form. But no - he had never held her body in his arms, had never brushed his own tears from her cold cheek, had never seen the burned, blistered skin on her hands... _blistered hands?_ The dread that had nestled in the pit of his stomach leaped upwards, piercing his heart. Somehow, he _knew_ that something was about to happen.   
At the edge of perception, he could hear a faint, sizzling hum, and for some reason, the sound filled him with fear. He turned to warn Aeryn. Seeing the blaze of light above her, he shouted a warning, a last, despairing cry that erupted from his lungs in a fountain of silver steam, but it was too late. All he could do was catch her as she fell. 

Energy burned through Moya's systems. In the infirmary, Jool began to scream as sparks and debris cascaded down around her; in the freezing corridor, a searing blast leaped out, striking D'Argo down in a blaze of light. In Pilot's Den, Rygel recovered consciousness for just long enough to see a wave of white-hot light surging towards him. Convulsions shuddered along the entire length of the ship; Chiana threw herself to the deck with a cry of terror. And alone in the darkness, with Aeryn's frozen body lying in his arms, John Crichton wept. 

Standing alone in the Command, Stark took a deep breath, readying himself to perform his final duty as a Stykera and usher Moya into the Other Realm. He raised a hand to the metal mask that covered the right-hand side of his face.   
"Stark." A soft voice caused him to turn, but there was no one behind him. He shook his head. The voices of the dead would wait... and soon, his own voice would be added to the cacophony of departed souls. "Stark." He ignored the whispered summons. "Stark." Abruptly, he recognised Zhaan's voice. He turned again, and this time, he saw her. The blue-skinned Pa'u stood in front of the viewscreen, silhouetted against the shifting, multicoloured miasma of the nebula. The shimmering light glittered off the gold pinpricks of her stomata, and in the varicoloured glow, she looked ethereally beautiful - serene, and yet stricken with sadness.   
"Why... are you sad?" Stark asked her, hesitantly. "We're going to be together again soon." She closed her eyes, reflectively.   
"You did not heed my warning." An expression of remorse flickered across the Banik's face.   
"There was nothing I could do, nothing, nothing..." he told her, his voice dying away into silence. Zhaan opened her eyes again.   
"There _was_ something," she insisted. "It's not too late to..." But Stark was already turning away.   
"No, there's no time, that's it, it's over... no time, no time," he babbled, loudly, blocking out the Delvian's voice. The Zhaan-phantasm began to recede, fading like an azure mist, retreating into the depths of Stark's memory - a shadow of the past, and nothing more.   
"Stark!" Her last despairing cry echoed in the Banik's mind. Ignoring it, he raised his hand, removed his mask. For the first time in many cycles, peace overcame him, washing over him, healing his tortured spirit and calming his mind. He knew that Zhaan was wrong. It truly was too late. 

Cyan energy rippled through Moya's vast bulk, searing through conduits not designed to bear such a heavy, destructive load. Systems failed and sparks exploded from bulkheads. Pain signals screamed down her neural fibres, and Pilot threw back his head and bellowed in agony, his voice echoing through the emptiness. A network of glowing blue-white lines slowly began to spread out over Moya's hull. Like grasping fingers, the cerulean tendrils crept along the immense curves of the Leviathan's body, enmeshing it in a web of sizzling energy. The dull bronze surface glowed brightly for a moment, reflecting the white light that surged out. The light grew brighter, building and building until it dominated everything, burning away the darkness in a single surge of purity. Then, slowly, it receded, leaving nothing behind but the vibrant colours of the barren, lifeless nebula. Not a single shred of the great vessel remained - it was as if Moya had never even existed.

**To be continued...**


End file.
